Plaza for Ready-made Garments, located in Suez, is a factory that specialises in outerwear and focuses on exporting its productions to Germany, the UK and the USA. Plaza had a major problem. Its worker retention rates were extremely low (between 90-100 workers were leaving every month) mainly due to bad relationships with superiors.

Such as the case with many factories, the prevailing culture is that a supervisor’s job entailed shouting at their staff to keep their production line in check and to ensure their staff are producing at full capacity. However, this wasn’t working neither in terms of production rates nor worker retention.

El Salam for readymade garments is a new company in Ismailia. While its founders were in the business of importing clothes, the newly added taxation and floatation of the Egyptian pound forced them into changing their practice.

The group of young owners decided to venture into the garment industry by establishing a factory in July 2016. With over 200 workers producing jeans for men and children, the founders had a rare opportunity to establish their own organisational culture - but it didn’t come without its set of challenges.

Sameh Mohamed, one of the founders and manager of El Salam, explains that they had trouble enforcing their own policy on their supervisors who had already been established and ...